*edited 7/9/10*

Lab Rat

By: AnneriaWings

"Please."

The lab was quiet after my latest plea, save for the faint humming of the nearby machines and the slight buzz that ran through the cuffs around my limbs. Also silent were my parents, until my father absently replied, his tone reflecting the thick tension that still clung to the air.

"Not anytime soon, Phantom; sorry." I craned my head up to see him fiddling with one of the machines by my table, his back turned.

I could tell from his tone of voice that he really wasn't sorry. He was triumphant, delighted! Here he was – the great Jack Fenton – with Amity's most famous ghost in his clutches. He'd finally be able to stick his fingers into me and there was nothing I could do to stop him and no one to help me. Pity was probably the last thing on my dad's mind.

I let my green eyes flick upwards to my mother. She'd been completely silent in the few minutes that had passed since her little tirade earlier. Any indication of her thoughts settled in the form of her eyes rolling slowly across my form, studying my every movement. Up, down, side to side. She was scrutinizing every detail about me, probably making mental notes here and there, gathering millions of little questions in her head and filing them away for later. I was disproving everything she'd ever theorized about ghosts just by existing. She was definitely thinking – I just had no idea what.

And it scared me. I could feel the remnants of cool puffs of exhaled air while she leaned in just a little closer, placing her gloved hands on the side of the table, her eyes now visible in a hard, concentrated glare. Her jaw was set stiffly, tongue moving once along the inside of her cheek in thought. Personal bubble, much?

What are you staring at? I half-wanted to ask. But I wasn't stupid. That'd just be asking to be electrocuted again.

Wincing and trying to twist away from her (which was completely unsuccessful, given the circumstances), I quickly moved my gaze down to the tips of my white boots, trying so hard not to let our eyes meet. This was one of the few times both of my parents had actually gotten a really up-close look at me. Scraping away every opportunity to avoid my mother having the chance to connect my appearance to that of her son's was precious right now – just as much as getting out of here alive. Or… half-alive, if it went down to specifics.

I shifted uncomfortably under her stare, struggling to breathe normally. My father continued to tinker with equipment that would record and analyze god-knows-what about me. Breathe. Right now they don't know anything and you haven't been torn apart yet, I scolded, sucking in a deep, shuddering breath above the fierce pain that continued to linger in my bones. I needed to get a good, solid grip on logic, try to figure this out, find a way to escape…

Ever so slightly lifting my head, I let my eyes drift across the lab. I was searching for something – anything – that could give me some answers, and after a minute or so of dead silence and my mind doing nothing but running around in pointless circles, I gave up. Physically, I was screwed. Those spectral energy-blocking restraints weren't going to budge no matter how hard I tried to break free. To add that insult to injury, I doubted Sam or Tuck had any idea I was down here, and with a dread-inducing jolt, I remembered that Jazz was off at the library for some late-night study session thing. It was just Phantom… and my parents.

In other words, I was still screwed.

(Screwed, screwed, screwed. You're gonna die; Dad's actually gonna live up to his goal of ripping—)

No, no, just get a grip and breathe. Focus. Gritting my teeth with corporeal reluctance, I managed to overcome most of the crazier fear-sodden thoughts and shove them to the very back of my mind.

I could try persuading them letting me go…

(You're insane, that's what you are; you'd have a better chance of relying on freaking Plasmius to get you out of this mess than Mom and Dad believing you)

"Umm… Y'know, guys," I began hesitantly, actually biting my lip to force the nagging, panicked voice in the back of my head to shut up, "I'm all for love of science and whatnot – that's great, but ripping me apart isn't—"

Mom's gloved hand was a blur and I heard that button being jammed into the side of the table again. The metal manacles that held me down suddenly fizzled and sparked to life, and pain instantly exploded inside my body once more. I involuntarily jerked out a surprised scream, squeezing my eyes shut and feeling every watt of electricity tearing through my nerves like a hot, rusty knife—

And then it was over. Over as soon as it had begun. My muscles still trembling, I let out a weak, shuddered moan, panting heavily through the lingering sparks of electricity snapping across my body.

(…I told ya so)

I felt a hard finger jab into my chest… but I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes to see whose.

"Don't think you can just con your way into getting out of this, Phantom, like you've done to nearly every one of our city's citizens," my mother's voice growled caustically, punctuating her statement with another poke, and I tried to cringe away. "We're not some naive child you can deceive into believing you actually have good-hearted intentions."

I squinted my watering eyes open, blinking to clear my vision. I gazed up into the cool eyes of my mother and noted the spark of true hatred for what I was – and for a brief moment, a thought flickered across my mind that I should tell them… to just get it over with. They might willingly taunt and torture a ghost, yeah, but… surely… their own son…

I bit my tongue. What the hell was wrong with me. I could hold out until they took a break or until Jazz got home; it hadn't come to that yet. For now, the 'what if's could be dwelled on later. Bringing myself out of my own thoughts. I coughed harshly. "Wh-what the hell're you talking about?" I rasped. "For Christ's sake, I'm not evil, for the millionth time—"

This time my father was the one to respond. "Please, you glob of rotting, protoplasmic slime, listen to yourself. You've cost this city thousands of dollars in repair damage alone – not to mention all of those times you'd stolen from—"

"If you're talking about those robbery incidents almost a freaking year ago, that wasn't me," I blurted with a sudden flash of irritation, and then grimaced. "Well – yeah, it was me, b-but it's not what you think; I—"

"Oh? It's not?" Dad asked, his question as sharp and cold as ice. "Then, by all means, explain. Maddie and I are all ears."

I wanted to explain. I really did. (No, you don't. This is just an open invitation to dig a hole and right now, you're already up to your neck in it!) Glancing off to the side, still struggling to breathe normally, I hesitated for a few seconds as my mind argued with itself. I'd basically just invited myself to be interrogated… but then again, how bad could it be? Hell, at least give me a chance to clear my name…

"I… was being controlled when all of that burglary stuff happened," I said to Dad after a moment, "by this creepy, anemic circus guy who's in prison right now."

"What about the time you attacked Montez?"

"Framed. Set up by another ghost with some pretty serious grudge issues."

Dad snorted. "It sure didn't seem like you were being set up when you deliberately shot at my wife and I!"

I winced at the sharp mordancy of his voice, then moved my gaze away from both of my parents. "I didn't mean to; it was an… accident," I mumbled quietly. "I thought you two were being overshadowed by other ghosts."

"Well, obviously, you were wrong."

"Yes, I was… and I'm sorry," I admitted, closing my eyes.

"No, you're not." He accused, breaking me from my drifting thoughts. "You're a ghost. You can't feel remorse."

I groaned aloud – not only at the pent-up frustration that was building by the second, but by the fact that Dad was, theoretically, right. I wasn't supposed to feel sorry. Hell, I wasn't supposed to feel anything, for that matter. I was just making them more and more curious, and that was not good.

"Then there was the time when you stole our ecto-skeleton during that massive ghost invasion last year," my father continued, breaking me away from my drifting thoughts.

I opened my eyes and raised a brow. "If either one of you had used it, you wouldn't be standing here over me right now!" I snapped. "You guys had even said so yourselves that it could be fatal. That suit would have drained all of your energy and you would have died. I'm just lucky the thing didn't flat-out kill me, either."

Through all of this I never noticed how silent my mother was, until now, when she said in a low voice, "But ghosts can't die."

Crap…

The statement hung in the air for a moment, my parents sharing a puzzled glance before fixing their attention back to me, while I was frozen in place. Their eyes swirled with dozens of unspoken questions that made my stomach roll, panic threatening to seep back in through that mental barrier despite how hard I tried to repress it. I licked my lips once and fought to control my breathing before blindly rushing head-first into an explanation.

"Th-that's… that's n-not what I meant," I feverishly backpedaled, my arms automatically yanking against their stupid restraints. "I meant, er, that I wouldn't literally, you know, die, but just… uhh… disappear?"

Stupid... Stupid. What the hell was that? The lie sounded ridiculously feeble even to me, but to my parents… How painfully obvious could I get? Internally, I was beating myself up in a way even resident school bully Dash would be proud of. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Mom's face all but shouted pure skepticism. She seemed to consider something for a moment, and then turned around to pull over a stool. She sat down in it on my right side and I had to strain my head up from this angle to see her better. "Well then, while we're on the subject, how exactly did you die, Phantom?" She asked, and for some reason her voice wasn't nearly as acidic as before.

I swallowed. Ah, jeez. "Do I really have to answer that question?"

"We're just curious," my father said.

"Alright, alright," I sighed, trailing my gaze up to the ceiling. "It… was an accident."

"An accident?" Mom furrowed her eyebrows. "What happened?"

"I was… electrocuted," I said carefully, in a concerted effort to keep my voice level. Technically it wasn't a lie, right?

"When?"

"Uhh… about a year and a half ago" I bit the inside of my cheek, instantly regretting saying that. You're already up to your neck in this hole, my mind berated. Common sense says you should have just stayed quiet – but no. You just had to get out that shovel and keep digging…

Mom was silent for a moment, hesitating. "Did it… hurt?"

I glanced over at her blue-suited form and blinked, caught off-guard. What was I supposed to say? According to their supposed perfectly logical and solid ghost theories, was I supposed to remember something like that?

Finally I looked back up at the ceiling. "Yeah," I said quietly, "it hurt. A lot."

Mom stared down at her crossed arms, at the white latex gloves she wore on her hands. "I'm sorry," she said (…Huh?), her face softening a little. It was weird. Almost… maternal.

"…Uhh… Mads…" Dad began.

"Why do you even care?" I said to her, glaring a little. "I'm just some pathetic gob of ectoplasm to you, remember?" On the inside was a completely different demeanor, though. I was scared and frustrated from the questions they were grilling me with. I didn't want to be tied down and cross-examined like a murder suspect and very well about to be cut open like a frog in Bio class, and, not to mention, I didn't have any idea what my parents were thinking.

I think Dad was about to speak again, but Mom briskly stood up from the stool and pushed it back, cutting into the air with an ominous scraping sound. "Just because we're scientists does not mean we don't feel sympathy," she said coolly, her expression hardening. "I'm sorry you died, Phantom; I'm sorry that it hurt. However, you're a ghost now. Strange as you are, having no other explanation, you have to be a ghost. And ghosts are what we study."

I didn't like where this was going.

"You already know enough," I said quietly, my voice barely above a whisper.

My mom shook her head. "You see, that's the thing – we don't. You're an ectoplasmic anomaly. There's so much we don't know about you." She gave a slight sigh of impatience. "The tests we ran while you were unconscious only gave way to more questions than answers."

"Such as the fact that you even bother to breathe," Dad said, nodding his head down at my chest. My breath nearly hitched in my throat, ironically, on cue at his words. "The question is, why? Ectoplasm is obviously what keeps your spectral self stabilized and intact; you don't need to breathe, you don't have lungs for breathing, and you don't have blood cells containing hemoglobin that require oxygen to be carried to living tissue." He narrowed his eyes. "In addition, looking over the fact that your inner core is a normal thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit, the rest of your temperature on average – according to our equipment – is a little over seventy… That's beyond hypothermic for a human, but for a ghost…" He scrunched up his forehead. "It's just too warm."

"But—"

"According to our theories, you shouldn't even exist, Phantom. There's no explanation as to why you are the way you are," Mom said. "We're going to find out why."

The wash of fear I'd worked so hard to block was now slowly beginning to spill over its barrier, clawing and coiling in my chest. My expression hardened a little in a glower, but it was a meek attempt at trying to cover up my growing anxiety with a less-than-convincing mask of bravado. "Well, maybe you should just leave it at that and walk away," I countered. "Maybe I don't want you to find out anything else."

My father gave a short laugh, of all things. "Hah! As if you have a choice."

At these words, Dad turned his back to me to place something in a tray beside him, and I caught sight of a small flash of metal in his hand, tapered and slim. A strangled gasp left my throat and ice settled in my stomach.

Scalpel.

"Oh no, you keep that thing away from me!" I warned, feeling nothing short of pure fear and panic. This was bad… this was very bad. Raw horror was definitely now evident in my huge, green eyes. My human heart would have been sprinting wildly by now. "Wh-why?"

Through that miasma of terror, I hadn't noticed at first a slight tugging sensation by my chest. My eyes had been glued and locked in place to the small set of various instruments Dad placed on the metal tray, in view, by the table's side. Only then did I tear my gaze away and look down to see Mom gingerly cutting away at my jumpsuit with a pair of sturdy medical scissors. The thick, black material easily cut loose, revealing paler-than-normal skin and the soft, ever-present glow my ghost form wore.

"Because, ghost," Dad finally answered, as Mom still concentrated on cutting away a large portion of my suit, "as we've already said, this is for our love of paranormal science. You're dead. You shouldn't even care."

No! Technically I'm only half! I wanted so badly to scream, and the breath that would allow me to do just that began to zip up into my throat before it came to a screeching halt.

I was torn at a crossroads. You've got to do something, now, my mind shrieked, but as much as I so badly wanted to tell them, I had to hesitate and think for a moment. Was it even worth it? Would telling them make any difference? My parents were seriously about to hurt me. Either I could spill everything – more than an entire year of secrets and lies and betrayal – and pray they'd believe and accept it, or stay quiet as I was tortured to death.

"B-But… but… You can't – oh god, oh god, no," I mumbled finally, my thoughts so soaked in terror that I couldn't even speak. It was suddenly hard to breathe. A large patch of skin – practically my entire upper torso – was exposed as my mother set down the scissors.

"He seems to be giving off a very complex show of fear," she said with a puzzled look, pausing for a moment just to look at me with a sudden uncertainty. "Jack, what if… what if…" She trailed off.

Dad looked up at her. "What if it's real?" He finished softly for her. He looked at me closely, studying my sporadic, struggling movements, and then chuckled in his usual booming voice. "Nah, that's impossible, Maddie. He can't feel emotions. He's trying to fool us." He shifted his gaze to Mom and smiled gently. "Don't let him get to you, dear."

I jerked my head up, giving a crazed, terrified glare to both of them. "What the—? Of course I can feel!" I shrieked. "And I sure as hell am feeling right now!"

Glancing back at me and furrowing his brows for a moment, Dad shook his head at my outburst and looked at my mother. "Or if not simply as part of an act," he told her, "he could be taking a certain memory of something sentiment – fear, in this case – and is imposing it on this particular situation. He must have some memory of the time before he died, right?"

Mom shrugged with a troubled sigh, but the corners of her mouth upturned. "Of course. You're right, I… just kind of lost it there for a sec, I guess."

He grinned at her in response, his wife's uncertainty forgotten completely, his face glowing with enthusiasm. "So," he began, snapping on a pair of white rubber gloves himself, "Can I do the slicing and dicing?"

She chuckled. "Actually, Jack, I think you'd better leave the sharp objects to me, this time. You'd said you'd record his stats and all other data on our experiments, remember?"

"Hmph," he whined, giving that typical, dramatic pouting look that was so Dad-like. It would have been comical, but given the dire situation, it wasn't funny in the least.

"Jack, pass me the second scalpel to the left, would you?"

"This one?"

"No, dear, your other left," she smiled.

"Oh. Here you go."

I was definitely feeling sick now, with paralyzing fear twisting itself so violently in my stomach I wanted to throw up. Pain was coming; every cell within me knew it, and the worst part of it all was that I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Razor-sharp blade in hand – no doubt coated by some sort of chemical so it wouldn't just pass through my body – my mother loomed over me, the harsh glare of the artificial fluorescent lights reflecting off her goggles in many hues of red. They gleamed on her face like the bloody eyes of a curious monster, or alien, or some other creature that was hell-bent on cutting up my insides.

Somehow through that hollow pit of ice-cold fear in my chest, I imagined those scenes where ordinary people from the city are strapped down to stainless steel operating tables like this one, being probed by aliens. You know, from the movies.

Probed by aliens, I wryly thought, almost laughing crazily at the notion, It's kinda like I'm being probed by aliens.

(You're growing delirious)

Dad drifted over, a clipboard in hand. He looked up at his wife and beamed across the table. "Ready when you are."

(They're not aliens they're your parents)

Mom glanced over at him and smiled.

(Your goddamn parents)

She carefully lowered the scalpel to my skin.

"W-WaitwaitWAIT! No! Stop, stop!" I shrieked, shuddering at the blade's cold touch. My human heart would have been racing at a hundred miles an hour as I lunged to the side, nearly hyperventilating, focusing all of my panic on the sheer desire to break free. Eyes most certainly skewed shut, I instinctively cringed away from the knife, not really caring that it led me closer to my father. "No, no, for the love of God, sto—"

"Ghost, enough with the drama," I heard Dad chide, probably rolling his eyes in the process, "You're not fooling anyone anytime soon. We know it's an act."

I gave a loud grunt as I desperately jerked and twisted and heaved my body to the side, completely focused on breaking free. Through my nauseous panic, the back of my mind registered the dull creaks and rattles the table made when I gave a particularly hard yank. Mom noticed this – she drew the scalpel back in one swift, fluid movement before it could slice open my skin.

"Jack," I heard her say – my eyes were still squeezed shut so I didn't really have any idea of what was going on – "I think he could use a mild dose of the sedative – 4 milliliters. He needs to hold still and he's struggling too much."

They're your freaking parents, I was offered again.

I opened my eyes to shoot a bitter glare at my mother. (Your own mother) "What else would you expect?" I yelled. "I've been kidnapped and now I'm tied down to a freaking operating table. Of course I'm going to struggle." I tried to curl my words into acid, but my voice had easily cracked. Neither of them acknowledged me.

(They love you)

No. No, they loved Fenton. Phantom on the other hand was nothing more than a valuable experiment. A husk of the living. A dead, unfeeling creature. A ghost.

I could feel my face turn deathly pale as Dad raised a large, painful-looking needle into view, allowing the bright indoor lights to catch it and reflect the greenish substance inside. My parents were going to deliberately kill me. Endless thoughts whirled around in my head with no real direction in mind as I mumbled a shaky, "No, nononono…"

(They love you so tell them; just tell them who you are)

"Stop—NO!"

"Jack, help me hold him down!"

(Tell them or you'll die)

"Oomph!" My view was blocked my a massive wall of orange and black as Dad firmly shoved his hand and half of his arm down onto my chest, preventing me from doing much more than shaking my head back and forth. It also restricted what little oxygen I managed to take in with each rapid, shallow breath, and I gave a harsh, choking cough in response as he practically suffocated me. Only panic wove through my nerves as I continued to whisper a desperate mantra of 'no's and 'please's.

(Tell them)

A small sting erupted on my right arm as I felt the needle plunging into my skin. Wincing a little, I tried once more to move against the weight pressing down on my chest, only to earn a painful electrical zap from the cuffs and a hard shove from my father's hand.

(TELL THEM.)

"Mom, Dad, no!"

Everything seemed to freeze at that one instant. The pinch of the needle slowly died and Dad's hand lifted hesitantly from my struggling form. My eyes darted frantically from parent to parent, their faces simultaneously turning from that of shock, then confusion, then slowly to seething anger as the meaning behind the outburst dawned on them.

"Please. Don't do this," I whispered.

Mom was the first to react. A loud smack split the air as she backhanded me across the side of my face. I flinched and tried to recoil away.

"How… dare you," she growled, "You think you can go around lying your way into the hearts of our citizens, but also have the audacity to try and fool us into believing that… we're… that we're experimenting on our own child? That's… You're disgusting."

"Mom – no, listen! It's me! I'm your son, D—"

She smacked me again. Hard. So hard that my neck snapped to the side on impact, a sharp gasp of pain leaving my throat. I could literally feel the sting of her handprint on my cheek.

"Don't call me that. You're evil. You're a ghost. A lying, disgusting monster. And you are most certainly not our son."

I shook my head slowly. "But… but…" I was frozen, failing to process the tiniest look of disbelief and fear flashed across my mother's face, if only for a millisecond. I kept gazing in that one spot where her eyes were even after she moved away. "But…" I whispered again, but they made no acknowledgement of hearing me. "I can show you…"

…They didn't believe me.

Dad looked up at her and offered a puzzled albeit consoling smile. "Let's just get started, Mads," he said softly.

…they didn't believe me…

My mind was numb. Despite her icy tone wavering just a little bit, Mom's words cut deeper than they should have, so much deeper. That tiny glimmer of hope that maybe – just maybe, they'd accept me, this, everything – was swept away as if it'd never existed. My entire life crashed down before my very eyes, the blunt, ugly truth shattering my heart like cold glass.

They would never accept this.

A lump of what could only be tears unconsciously crept to my throat as I struggled to spill everything. "P-please, Mom, I-I'm…" And I sincerely was about to, right then and there – when I was hit with a vaguely familiar sense of laxness, the injection's contents already wreaking havoc on my system. Everything seemed to slow down. The room began to spin a little and I blinked a few times, the lights around the lab seeming brighter and blurred. I opened my mouth again in a last-ditch effort to speak again, but the words died in my throat.

Previous crazed, terror-driven thoughts were slowly scrambled and twisted into a jumble of incoherence as the chemical blasted through my head, forcibly snuffing out even the tiniest bit of remaining desire to escape. My once-tense and shuddering form fell limp and mostly unmoving save for the steady in, out, in, out of my breathing. Mom and Dad's teal and orange forms blurred together until they were mere silhouettes, details obscured into near-blackness by the blinding lights overhead.

Then the closest idea to what could only be you've got to show them NOW flashed across my mind. Struggling through my drug-induced daze, I desperately reached inside myself to draw out that tiny speck of heavy warmth, the only proof I had left.

There was nothing there.

Nonono, it's there; find it, I thought. Panic would have surely taken over once more, but the tranquilizer tossed aside such an intense emotion into the 'I'll deal with this later' category. I closed my eyes and searched again. Somewhere I might have reached it, even tried to summon it to the outside world, but the attempt was weak and futile. It was like grasping at water, the transformation lying just beneath the surface. Having no other alternative I gave up, succumbing to the increasing weight of fatigue that pressed down on me. I could only watch as my last desperate attempt at turning human slipped right through my mental fingers, and then disappeared.

"…think he's ready."

I blearily opened my eyes again to brightness and the sound of voices muttering a string of muffled, disjointed words. They spoke as if from underwater. Everything was so unfocused and bright; it swam in a sea of confusion and calm. It was almost… peaceful.

"…still trying to move… you gave him is working, though… hold him down?"

Glancing sluggishly up at the ceiling, I slowly tried to twist myself to the side and upwards to get a better grip on things (what exactly are you trying to grip?), but felt someone – or something – gently press my head back onto a hard, metal surface in an effort to keep me still. Wait – metal? Stainless steel, to be more precise, as my eyes calmly flicked down for a closer inspection. Huh, weird. Was I in a hospital or something?

Pain suddenly exploded everywhere.

My eyes snapped open with a gasp only to squeeze back shut again. Jerked from my curious stupor, my body reeled up against the fetters holding me down, tensing violently against the sudden onslaught of razor-sharp, burning, pain that tore through my nerves. I weakly tried to open my mouth for a scream, but couldn't find the command to do so. Jagged slices of white-hot agony all but ripped through my insides. It locked me both physically and mentally in place like a vice, allowing no room for a struggle, or even the tiniest verbal protest.

Somehow, after an eternity of laying there rigid and trying to writhe, I was able to stumble through my scrambled awareness and pin-point the spot where the pain was strongest. On my torso – just above my ribcage – something hot and cold and sharp sliced down into my skin. I felt a weird oozing sensation in the wake of the (knife? blade?) source. It dribbled down my side and collected on the steel underneath me.

I winced at the feeling of flesh being pulled back, of bone being snapped. Either sternum or ribs, my mind unhelpfully said, but I was unable to process the thought or meaning. The agony split through my entire body and I so badly wanted to scream. Thoughts barely coherent, my insides felt like they were being frozen and boiled at the same time, along with a definite sense of wrongness at the hand that poked and prodded around towards my spectral core. A strange stench filled the air… with a sense of horror, I tried to blanch. Something was eating at my skin.

The voices muttered and murmured again at the same time a loud, strange noise split the air – a ragged screeching of some sort. Excitement and a sense of morbid curiosity swelled over the piercing sound.

"…actually has a solid, bone-like skeletal structure underneath… gonna try to get a sample of this."

"…exciting, Mads!… discovery. Front page of journals and magazines for sure."

"…reaction to the chemical compounds on these scalpels… amazing."

Then I remembered. With it, a shocking recognition that the tortured cry filling my ears was my own. I vaguely felt a series of new stings on my arm of what could only be more needles doing god-knows-what to me, but it wasn't a big distinction from the rest of the pain that attacked my body. The world had been trapped in place, any sense of passing time consumed by absolute agony. It ripped and clawed and screamed through every nerve. It was never-ending, refusing to cease even for just one merciful respite; the excruciating, unbearable torture went on as fresh as it had begun. My entire body tensed in a hopeless attempt to escape it as I threw my head back onto the table, fists clenching and unclenching, a choking sob catching itself in my throat.

Fighting to regain control of anything coherent, the too-vivid realization, they're doing this because they want to, settled heavily back down on my shoulders for the second time tonight, adding to the utter misery that wrapped itself around my form. It was futile. Useless. Everything was useless. What was the point of telling them if it'd only come back to this?

Any boundaries I'd held between physical and mental suffering blended together into one relentless, endless agony. I was going to die. I was surely, definitely, going to die. I couldn't scrounge up enough energy to care, though, because only pain was left. Pain was all I was.

"Jack… Phantom – is he crying?"

"He… I think he is."

The quiet murmurs grew softer as I became aware of a flood of warm tears streaming down my cheeks and the short, gasping breaths that shuddered with my jerking body. Everything suddenly slammed into focus once more as the knife twisted and dug deeper into my flesh. My eyes flew open for a split second and I felt myself lunge back out of instinct and panic, my wrists and ankles pulling desperately at their restraints, the strength needed for speaking just barely out of my reach.

I couldn't endure this for much longer; this was already going way beyond my mental and physical limits and there was nothing I could do. All I wanted was for it to stop. For everything to end, now – in any way possible… just make it stop. Because nothing… nothing… was worth this.

Stop, I begged, trying to get the simple word out into the open like it was the last thing I had, but all that left my throat was another strangled, dry sob.

Please… just make it stop…

One of the voices – my mother's, I could tell – wavered, suddenly full of true worry. "This… Jack, I-I think we need to stop. He's crying, hyperventilating…"

"What? What do you mean?"

"I think… I think this is real for him." The worry in Mom's voice gradually turned to traces of doubt, some sympathy, but mainly a growing sense of dismay.

There was a quiet snort of disbelief. "Mads, come on, let's be realistic. You know he's evil. He can't feel; it's not… real…"

"…What's that light at his stomach?"

Through the soft, nearly incoherent voices that swirled around me, through the haze of unbearable exhaustion and pain, I vaguely noticed a slightly cold, tingling sensation near my abdomen where the serrated, rusty daggers of agony were the strongest. It grew and extended throughout me, a familiar energy that swept through both body and mind. My body involuntarily transformed back over the line between life and death – its instinctive, last desperate attempt for survival.

My eyes were still glued shut. I thought I heard a gasp or two, the voices halted in stunned silence. Warmth and life pulsed in synch with the pain that increased tenfold. My voice curling into a weak, rasping moan, I tried to twist myself to the side – slipping in a pool of my own icy ectoplasm and what was now undoubtedly red, warm blood. Its coppery smell assaulted my nostrils, throwing everything out of order again.

My wheezy cries slowly fell silent. Just lying there, panting, I heard a ringing clatter of what were probably tools dropping to the floor.

"…Danny?" somebody whispered.

The pain began to numb. Sweet, heavenly relief flooded through me – only because it brought the prospect of finally, finally falling unconscious. I would have smiled, or even laughed, if I could have. It was finally going to stop.

I heard a pure, unadulterated scream of horror.

Well, my mind scowled, looks like they found out.

But I was too busy passing out to care.